Friday, 6 May 2016

Conservation and cake!

Earlier this week Ruth attended what is now an annual get
together for Scottish conservators to share ideas and news. Employing a pecha
kucha approach, 18 speakers had five minutes each to talk to a room packed full
of conservators representing the major nationals for library, museum, art and
archive collections, as well as universities, councils and those in private
practice. There were also a few aspiring conservators, with students and
volunteers there too.

The Centre for Research Collections hosted the event,
following in the footsteps of 2015’s host, the National Library of Scotland
(NLS), and it was great to be able to welcome so many professionals with shared
goals and backgrounds to talk about recent developments in our field. I spoke
at last year’s event, presenting a whistle-stop tour of our internship
programme for archivists and conservators, but this year I confined myself to
loading up all the PowerPoints, enjoying the presentations, and tweeting using
#PaperConservators.

All the presentations were well-rehearsed and interesting,
but stand-out ones for me touched on some of the issues that we deal with when
working to preserve the LHSA collections. Isobel Griffin from NLS talked about
prioritising collections for treatment, and being clear and transparent when
describing the processes conservators use and the decision-making that lies
behind those objects that aren't treated as well as those that are. Mary Garner
spoke about preparing collections for mass digitisation, and while we're not doing
that with LHSA collections, it is an area that we need to keep up-to-date on to
inform our smaller scale digitisation work. Gloria Conti from the National
Records of Scotland presented a case study which captured perfectly the
relationship a conservator can establish with those represented in the records
we preserve - and the responsibility we have to treat the data in the records
and, by extension the individuals themselves, sensitively.

A question and answer session with some of speakers

There were also a couple of papers on treating wallpaper in
situ: Helen Creasy looked to the historic pinned and tacked repairs on the
wallpaper she was tasked with conserving and used toned stainless steel staples
to reattach flaking pieces of the paper that couldn't be held in place with
conventional adhesive methods. Again, wallpaper is not something we have to
deal with here, but Helen inspired me to think creatively when addressing
damage to collection items to find the best solution for each case (though I
don't think I'll be replicating any of the historic repairs I see on the LHSA
collections - Elastoplast doesn't meet any of a conservator’s basic
requirements for an appropriate and ethical repair!).

Conservation and cake don't often mix but, as there were no
collection items around, some delicious home-baking kept us going through the
afternoon - it turns out some of the clever conservators that attended the
event are brilliant bakers too!

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Lothian Health Services Archive holds the historically important local records of NHS hospitals and other health-related material.
We collect, preserve and catalogue these records and promote them to increase understanding of the history of health and for the benefit of all.

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